Читать книгу The Last Day of January - Greer Decker - Страница 5

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Whenever I’d talked to my friends in London about mum and tried to paint a picture, I’d always said she was like the Queen in many ways. In stature, mannerisms and dress sense, although her budget was obviously smaller.

She never left the house without a hat and had fine leather driving gloves, though I’d never seen her wear them. She had firm views on skirt lengths and a strong aversion to slang, bad table manners and drinking straight from the bottle. She was a teenager of the fifties, had endured a strict upbringing and been inspired by one classy aunt in particular. From her, mum had acquired a lifetime love of classic-style shoes and handbags to go with beautiful dresses and pencil skirt suits. She’d never possessed a pair of trousers or a T-shirt and she’d always kept her habit of categorising clothes into those for best and those for every day. Her every-day suits would be worn to the post office or supermarket, the dresses and best suits to weddings, dinner dances and christenings. Sadly, there had not been many of those festive occasions for mum for some years now.

Mum was born in Blackpool, a town for which she harboured mixed feelings. She called it a dump, without a single tree, but talked fondly and with great pride of its heyday in the fifties. In black and white photos, mum in her twenties had looked like Deborah Kerr, who’d spent the last years of her life in a Suffolk village only a few miles away from here. Mum had seen Frank Sinatra at the Blackpool Opera House in 1953 as well as Vera Lynn and the Beverley Sisters.

After John Lennon’s death, she’d casually mentioned to me that she’d seen the Beatles at the same venue in 1964. Just as impressive was her recollection of Freddie Frinton’s very first Dinner for One performance at Blackpool’s Winter Gardens show in 1954. Rachel had told me that millions of Germans religiously watched this sketch every New Year’s Eve since its first broadcast there in 1972. As far as I knew, most Brits have never heard of it.

From our long conversations I learnt more about my parents’ families in that last week of August 2019 than in the fifty years before. The challenge was to listen and not get irritated by the frequent repetitions.

Living with mum was tougher than I’d anticipated. In between the times when we would sit, relaxed, at the dining table or sofa and chat about the past, I noticed how overwhelmed she was by every-day activities. Keeping track of time and her personal possessions had become a major task. She would ask whether we’d had breakfast yet and let every cup of tea go cold. Her appetite was tiny in any case.

Mum’s longer-term memory was still in order, while her ability to process and store new information was gone. She spent half the day making sure items were in the place she thought they would be. When we’d decided on the plan for the day, she would not have known it two minutes later. For millions of people with experience in dementia, this was perfectly normal. For me, having little experience of dementia, it was tough.

Mum kept asking me if Rachel was okay; she hadn’t heard from her for months. And how long I was staying and why I kept taking things. Where were her slippers and her favourite pen and her books? At the table she would empty her handbag, take out her three glasses cases, then the glasses inside them and study them as if she’d never seen them before. Then she would sigh, put them back into their cases, then the cases into the handbag, only to start all over again a few minutes later.

Little scraps of paper with her handwriting were everywhere, in every drawer, in a box by the telephone, bundled in rubber bands in pots in the kitchen and lodged between

ornaments and vases on the bureau and windowsills. Numbers, names and scribbles, shopping lists and other random notes. Her bank pin code was the item I came across most. It was written everywhere.

Once my shock at these circumstances had passed, mum’s insinuations, accusations and changed stories suddenly became more bearable. Now I understood why mum made those reproachful comments and any defence was futile. It was not meant critically.

If I’d comprehended that earlier, it would have saved much personal hurt. No, I hadn’t written all over the walls when I was three (it was one pencil mark). No, I hadn’t run off with mum’s watch without asking her and subsequently lost it. No, I hadn’t mislaid her address book, preventing her from sending her friends a birthday card for the last five years. Parts of mum’s brain were disintegrating – a friend who was a nurse had shown me the pictures from the Dementia Society – and there was nothing we could do. Or was there?

We hadn’t really tried, and I felt guilty for that. I’d been here so seldom. I could have come more often, talked to her much more, found out more about dementia, insisted on talking to the doctors. It was too late now.

On the positive side, mum presently believed she’d been to many more places than she actually had and conjured up all sorts of memories of wonderful trips and holidays with my father. She felt she’d had a full life and was content.

With mum’s humour and delightful personality most of the time, we had some good times too. My mood during the day was generally good, especially when we pottered about in the garden together. Mum was at her best here, she could still reel off all the names of plants and flowers and did some deadheading as we went. Later in the evenings, this would often give way to moments of despair as I saw how confused she was. My thoughts grew even darker at night, when the whole thing felt like a huge mistake, and I felt guilty for thinking so.

Rachel and I had discussed the option of a care home several times over the summer. We needed to do so again now that I had a better picture. Mum had a lovely house and garden. It had been perfect for her. In recent months on the phone, she had complained of how much of a burden the garden was becoming. But the idea of her leaving her home made me feel awful. I had huge respect for people who cared for their elderly or sick family at home for years.

I would look for a lovely home for mum. Assuming there was such a thing. Mum had already looked at a few residences herself years ago and had shown Rachel and me brochures of the one she liked most. Nobody had taken her very seriously at the time. If the truth be known, no one had taken her very seriously about a lot of things for a long time. I’d only wondered why she was looking at homes when she was still so fit.

On Thursday evening, the phone rang.

‘Hello. Sarah Wills speaking.’

‘Hi. It’s Alison, just checking it’s alright to come and do Joan’s hair tomorrow.’

‘Yes, great, thanks. What time do you usually come?’

‘At two. Is that alright?’

‘Perfect.’

I told mum that Alison was coming tomorrow. I’d noticed she called her Alice.

‘Her name’s Alison, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, I think so. Or Alice. Maybe she can do your hair sometime. It’s a mess.’

It was always black and white in our family, but maybe that was normal in those days. There was that small, popular Labour PM who failed at everything in their eyes, because he came from Yorkshire, not Lancashire, and he was from the wrong party as well. Then there was the one from Portsmouth, also Labour and therefore also doomed to failure. Then the tough one whom my father had admired, for which I was ashamed, and it still made me sad today to think I was ashamed of that detail about my father, who was such a wonderful person in my eyes. It was similar with colleagues, neighbours, teachers, acquaintances. That was perhaps the reason why I still found it pleasant today when I came across someone who was less quick to judge.

On Saturday morning the doorbell rang. It was the Avon lady. Surely she wasn’t the same lady from years ago? She looked as though she might have been, bearing testimony to the quality of her care products. No, I think she was a different lady. Mum chatted to her for ages. She was convinced she hadn’t paid her for her last purchases. The Avon lady insisted that she had.

When she left, we got ready to go shopping. Mum said she’d fetch some money. I suggested I’d pay with my card. She started rummaging through one of the bottom cup-boards in the kitchen all the same. She wanted to show me where she’d hidden some notes, but they weren’t there. Suddenly she got annoyed by all the Tupperware boxes and bashed one of them to the back of the cupboard. Staggering to get up, she rushed into the dining room and began rooting in the sideboard.

‘I had a thousand pounds in here.’

I looked at her.

‘Only I can’t find it now. Have you taken it?’

‘No.’

The door to the little cupboard to my right flew open. A travel book fell to the floor.

‘Here it is. In this envelope, right at the bottom. Count it and see.’

I took the notes and counted them on the table. Ten fifties.

‘There’s five hundred here, Mum.’

‘That can’t be. It was a thousand. Someone must have taken it.’

I sighed.

‘Are you sure? Perhaps it was five hundred.’

‘No. I’m sure. That was for a rainy day. My running-away money. That’s why I kept it in there with the maps.’

‘Well, let’s take it with us for now. I don’t like the thought of all that cash lying there. We’ll pay it into the bank as soon as we get a chance.’

‘I like to have some cash at home.’

‘Yes, but five hundred is too much.’

‘It’s a thousand there. Count it.’

I counted again.

‘It’s definitely five hundred.’

‘No, it’s a thousand.’ Mum frowned.

I forced myself to forget the money. I would have a look through the sideboard later when mum was in bed.

The next issue was what to wear. Mum wanted to change into her best suit, which was fair enough. I helped her put it on and the skirt was far too long, but she was happy. Next, she got out her big navy woollen coat.

‘Mum, it’s actually quite warm out there today. I wouldn’t bother with the coat.’

‘Okay. I’ll put it in the car.’

I didn’t see the point of that but didn’t argue. She was already getting ratty.

The supermarket shopping also proved laborious, although the sour mood had passed by the time we entered the shop. Mum put a few items in the trolley that I knew we had en masse at home or that she didn’t like. She seemed happy for me to make suggestions and agreed to everything, clearly relieved that someone was taking charge. I slipped two things back when she wasn’t looking.

At home, we had a piece of the fruit cake we’d just bought. Mum told me again about the time Patsy and Michael had come for the afternoon and eaten three pieces of her fruit cake each. Patsy had pocketed her little fruit knife too, presumably by mistake. It was good that we were having it now then, I told her.

‘Yes. Do you know, I used to make fruit cake every year for the village fete, only that lady on the committee used to snatch it up before the fete had even opened! She loved my fruit cake.’

‘Really? That was sneaky!’

‘Yes, and I don’t think she ever paid for it. She probably saw it as her prerogative after all her hard work. She was a right snob to be honest.’

I put a film on in the evening that looked just like mum’s thing. The Ladies in Black from 2018. I loved it and mum seemed to be following it.

At the end, I asked, ‘Did you like the film, Mum?’

‘Yes, I did. I’ve seen it before loads of times. So have you by the way. It’s an old one.’

I’d been hoping that mum would still be watching lots of telly. Never in the day though, as that wasn’t socially accept-able in her book. I noticed with concern that when mum wasn’t looking for personal items or telling me something about her childhood, she would often just stare into space.

In the afternoon, I only just managed to persuade her to go for a short walk to the duck pond in the village.

‘You’re always on the go. I’m tired and just want to relax.’

‘Let’s just stretch our legs and feed the ducks.’

She sighed, left the room and came back in her slippers. I barely dared to suggest the sandals instead but there was no way round it. I fetched them and helped her change. Then I filled a little paper bag with oats and handed them to mum.

By the end of Sunday, I’d changed a few things. To minimise the risks, I turned the oven switch off at the back and hid the iron. In bed that night, I started to read up on dementia. Mum appeared to be somewhere between mild and moderate symptoms. She was often confused or disorientated, but you could still have good conversations with her, and she was perceptive and articulate.

In another article I read why people with dementia generally no longer liked watching TV. They couldn’t follow the plot anymore and found the moving screen irritating. When mum maintained she’d seen all the series and films before, she was justifying why she didn’t want to watch television. She was crafty like that. The fact that reading had become impossible was a great shame. Mum had always loved reading. To hide this fact from me, she’d mention every day that she was really enjoying the book she was currently reading.

My better understanding of her symptoms released a lot of the tension that had once existed between us. I felt ready to give her time, patience and love.

In that first week I avoided thoughts of London. Suffolk was nice but most striking was the much older population on average and the tortoise pace of life. I’d loved rushing around London. The drivers were slower here, except for the youngsters who liked to take chances at every bend in the lanes. If I could survive the two nasty corners on my short car journey home from school each day, I could consider myself lucky. I liked the peacefulness and the pretty villages with their pink cottages and duck ponds. I missed the grandeur of the buildings in London and the mix of people on the streets, in fact anyone on the streets. Suffolk was empty.